Deacon Goodsole.: 

—­I don’t believe it’s true.  Yes I do too.  But I don’t believe it’s applicable.  That is—­well what I mean to say—­I can’t express myself exactly, but my idea is this, that the people that won’t work in the church are the very ones that do nothing out of it.  The busy ones are busy everywhere.  There is Mr. Line, for example.  He has a large farm.  He keeps a summer hotel, two houses always full; and they are capitally kept houses.  That, of itself, is enough to keep any man busy.  The whole burden of both hotel and farm rests on his shoulders.  And yet he is elder and member of the board of trustees, and on hand, in every kind of exigency, in the church.  He is one of the public school commissioners, is active in getting new roads laid out, and public improvements introduced, is the real founder of our new academy, and, in short, has a hand in every good work that is ever undertaken in Wheathedge.  And there is Dr. Curall, whose case Mr. Laicus has advocated so eloquently and who is too busy to be an elder; and I verily believe I could count all his patients on the fingers of my two hands.

Mrs. Goodsole,:  [(inclined to agree with everybody, and so to live at peace and amity with all mankind).]

—­There is something in that.  There is Mrs. Wheaton who has only one child, a grown up boy, and who keeps three or four servants to take care of herself and her husband and her solitary son, and she is always too busy to do anything in the church.

Deacon Goodsole.: 

—­On the other hand there is not a busier person in the church than Miss Moore.  She supports herself and her widowed mother by teaching.  She is in school from nine till three, and gives private lessons three evenings in the week, and yet she finds time to visit all the sick in the neighborhood.  And when last year we held a fair to raise money for an organ for the Sabbath school, she was the most active and indefatigable worker among them all.  Mrs. Bisket was the only one who compared with her.  And Mrs. Bisket keeps a summer boarding-house, and it was the height of the season, and she only had one girl part of the time.

Dr. Argure rose to go, Deacon Goodsole followed his example.  There were a few minutes of miscellaneous conversation as the gentlemen put on their coats.  As we followed them to the library door Deacon Goodsole turned to me:—­

“But you have not given me your answer yet, Mr. Laicus,” said he.

Before I could give it, Jennie had drawn her arm through mine, and looking up into my face for assent had answered for me.  “He will think of it, Mr. Goodsole,” said she.  “He never decides any question of importance without sleeping on it.”